San Berdo BK!

The domino's are in motion.  California is in dire shape as we see these bankruptcies take off.

HERE is the article.

We are seeing this mess down to the local level.  We have a dysfunctional state where the dysfunctional federal system has finally come home to roost.   When our state has a 16 billion dollar deficit (some say twice that), and yet the kids under the Capitol dome still vote to dump 65 billion dollars (57 billion in deficit)  for a high speed rail on the bond market, we taxpayers/citizens are simply screwed.  How do we explain this utter disregard for reality?  Is there something in the water in Sacramento that makes the kids delusional?

It is time to regroup.   I do not see a fix other than what we now see sweeping the state.  Bankruptcy may be the only way to redo all those contracts passed over the years with the unions and the pension systems.  Without income to match the expenditures, without jobs and taxpayers, without freedom to innovate because of suffocating rules and regulations, we see first hand the results of those follies of government.  Demise of our system.  But we see a total disregard at all levels of government in California.  We see the piling on of more and more rules everyday.  We see the upper push of more fees and taxes to backfill the shortfall created by the very policies put in place by the kids under the dome and local governments.

How can we fix it?  I think the only way to fix the mess is to "blow up the boxes" of conventional thinking exhibited and practised by our politicians and the systems they have put in place.  It is not working and many of us who saw this coming in the early 80's can now say "we told you so"!

I watched Mittt Romney at a townhall last night on CSPAN.  One of the questions an audience member asked was when will the mandates without funding stop?  We at the local level said that 30 years ago but no one above the local level gave a rat's ass and they just kept passing more and more laws tying up and taking away our local freedom to spend our money on our priorities.  This has in its own way, made America equal in that the whole system is in jeopardy because the federal system has been out of control.  This was mostly because the courts said the Commerce Clause makes anything and everything the feds want the Supreme law of the land.  The Tenth Amendment was trashed and programs like the EPA and EEOC and so many other federal laws were to be implemented even though we did not want them.

The rules and the unions and civil service have brought America to its knees and we see the results.  Cities like San Bernardino and Stockton are kaput, both are the canaries in the mine!  So if we want to survive as a country and have a economy of progress we must get the government out of the everyday lives of each of us.  Return to the enumerated Constitution at the Federal level and at the state and local level, adjourn the Legislature and don't come back for a couple of years.  Return the ability to fire bad employees and have citizen panels to mediate decisions of government employees and mandates.  We can't rely on the government to do the right thing anymore and we have to return to the basics of governance if we want to survive as a country.